Machine Made of Lego Builds Anything You Want — Out of Lego

Watch out, humans: An invasion of self-replicating Lego robots could be at hand.

Software engineer by day, Lego maniac by night Will Gorman has created the MakerLegoBot, a machine that can take a virtual 3-D model and assemble it using Lego bricks.

The machine is itself built entirely out of the Lego system, which raises the possibility — theoretically at least — that the machine could, with some modifications, build a copy of itself. The 3-D assembler uses three Lego Mindstorms NXT Bricks, along with 9 NXT motors.

“There is a recursiveness to this whole thing,” says Gorman.

“I love the idea of self-assembly and the Star Trek replicator and I love Legos,” he says. “I wanted to bring those two worlds together.

The MakerLegoBot is a tribute to the emerging trend of 3-D printers and self-replicating machines such as MakerBot and RepRap.

More mainstream 3-D printers use plastic, not Lego, but the principle of converting 3-D designs into real objects is similar.

Here’s how the MakerLegoBot works: A feed system that’s about two-and-a-half feet tall and can hold about 35 bricks connects to the LegoBot. The object that the MakerLegoBot is to assemble is designed in MLCad, a modeling program. A Java app that runs on a PC takes the file from the MLCad software, determines a set of print instructions and sends those instructions over USB to the LegoBot.

The machine retrieves a brick from the feed system and places it in the exact location where it should be. It uses an axle-based release mechanism to leave the brick in place.

The current design works with 1×2, 2×2, 3×2, 4×2 and 8×2 Lego bricks. So far, the machine can’t print Lego blocks or use NXT blocks and motors — a major limitation. It just works off ordinary Lego bricks, which must be fed into it by human assistants. Of course, a MakerBot might be able to fabricate a Lego brick, raising some interesting possibilities for a collective robot uprising.